Previewing the four local by-elections of 21st March 2024
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”
Before we start this week, this column has a message relating to the Tower ward of the City of London. This sits at the south-east corner of the City to the north and west of the Tower of London. Within the ward boundaries are the railway terminus of Fenchurch Street, the Docklands Light Railway station at Tower Gateway, the street of Minories and the head office of Trinity House, which runs the lighthouses along the English and Welsh coasts. Despite the name Tower ward does not cover the Tower of London, which is located within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets and has never been part of the City.
Tower ward is represented on the City Corporation by four Common Councilmen and by Alderman Nicholas Lyons, a Dublin-born financier who took over that role in September 2017 after the death of the previous Alderman Sir Paul Judge. He gives a home address in northern Norfolk and commutes into the City from there. Lyons would normally be expected to seek re-election within six years, but this was delayed because September 2023 fell during his year as the 694th Lord Mayor of London in 2022–23; the highlight of his mayoral year was representing the City at the coronation of Charles III and Camilla. Once his term as Mayor was over last November Lyons was free to seek another term as Alderman from his constituents: when nominations closed nobody had opposed his re-election, and Lyons was formally returned to the Aldermanic bench at yesterday’s Wardmote. This column sends its congratulations.
This leaves four polls taking place on 21st March 2024:
Yaxley and Farcet
Cambridgeshire county council; caused by the death of Conservative councillor Mac McGuire.
We’re now on the glidepath down to May’s ordinary local elections across England and Wales, and although there is enough material for a column every week up until 2nd May the actual content for the next month or so will be a little sparse. Partly because of this, and partly because there aren’t as many Conservative councillors as there used to be, there are just four Conservative by-election defences pencilled in before the ordinary local elections on 2nd May. Three of them take place today.
We start with a ward based on the village of Yaxley, which lies immediately to the south of the city of Peterborough; if you enter the city from the south along the A15 road or the East Coast Main Line, you’ll pass through Yaxley. Farcet is a smaller village to the north-east. The ward also takes in a large fenland area including part of the nature reserve of Holme Fen: this is usually cited as the lowest point in Great Britain, with fen drainage and resulting subsidence leaving the ground here 2.75 metres below sea level.
The western boundary of Yaxley and Farcet division passes through Norman Cross, a junction on the Great North Road (now the A1(M) motorway) which in 1796 became home to the world’s first purpose-built prisoner of war camp. Thousands of French soldiers and sailors were held here during the Napoleonic Wars; the prison was demolished in 1816 once the wars were over. Norman Cross gave its name to one of the four Hundreds of Huntingdonshire, and then to Norman Cross rural district which was the local authority here until the reorganisation of 1974, when Huntingdonshire became a district under an expanded Cambridgeshire county council.
In Cambridgeshire county council elections Yaxley and Farcet division is safely in the Conservative column. Lawrence “Mac” McGuire was the longest-serving member of the county council, having been first elected in 1985 and with continuous service from 1997 until his death on New Year’s Eve. He had served as the council’s deputy leader and as chairman during his long local government career, and February’s full council meeting posthumously bestowed the title of honorary alderman on him. McGuire’s final re-election in Yaxley and Farcet division was in May 2021, when he enjoyed a 57–25 lead over the Liberal Democrats.
Things are just as easy for the Conservatives at parliamentary level. Yaxley and Farcet division is part of the North West Cambridgeshire parliamentary seat, where Conservative backbencher Shailesh Vara polled over 40,000 votes in 2019. Vara has held this seat since 2005; his political career peaked at the tail-end of the Johnson administration, in which he sat in Cabinet for two months as Northern Ireland secretary.
But local government in Cambridgeshire is not a happy place to be a Conservative right now. The 2021 elections saw the Tories lose control of both Cambridgeshire county council and the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough mayoralty, where Labour came from behind to win on transfers. Both of those bodies are next up for election in 2025. Huntingdonshire district council has a rainbow anti-Conservative coalition in charge following the 2022 elections, when Yaxley ward split its representation: shares of the vote were 34% for the Conservative slate, 28% for independent candidate Sally Howell, 22% for the Liberal Democrats and 16% for Labour, with the three seats going two to the Conservatives and one to Howell. The Tories had previously held all three seats in the ward; the councillor who lost out was Mac McGuire, who finished a long way behind his running-mates.
So McGuire’s death has resulted in an interesting-looking race for his county council seat. Defending for the Conservatives is Kev Gulson, who has been a district councillor for Yaxley ward since 2018 and also sits on Yaxley parish council. The Lib Dems have reselected their runner-up from 2021 who is another Yaxley parish councillor, IT consultant Andrew Wood. Standing for Labour is Richard Ilett, who was top of their slate here in the 2022 Huntingdonshire elections. Our fourth candidate on the ballot who returns from the 2022 election here is independent district councillor Sally Howell, who is also a Farcet parish councillor, runs a small business in the ward and is plugged into a large number of local voluntary groups. The Greens’ Ellisa Westerman completes the ballot paper.
Parliamentary constituency: North West Cambridgeshire
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): North West Cambridgeshire
ONS Travel to Work Area: Peterborough
Postcode district: PE7
Kev Gulson (C)
Sally Howell (Ind)
Richard Ilett (Lab)
Elissa Westerman (Grn)
Andrew Wood (LD)
May 2022 Huntingdonshire district result C 1128/1054/745 Ind 907 LD 736 Lab 510/484
May 2021 result C 1296 LD 578 Lab 403
May 2018 Huntingdonshire district result C 1310/1194/926 Lab 513/511/388 Ind 384 UKIP 358
May 2017 result C 1118 Lab 558 UKIP 457
Previous results in detail
Heckington Rural
North Kesteven council, Lincolnshire; caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Stew Ogden.
For our second by-election we stay in a landscape of fenland, but this time travel north of Peterborough into Lincolnshire. Heckington is a large village on the main road and railway line between Sleaford and Boston. It is known for its windmill, which dates from 1830 and is thought to be the only windmill in Europe with eight sails.
This flat and windswept landscape was clearly seen as ideal for wind power then, and that hasn’t really changed since. The large and empty Heckington Fen to the east of the village has for some years been in the sights of Ecotricity, a green energy firm which is trying to tap the area’s weather to generate electricity. Their original proposal for a large windfarm fell through in 2022 over concerns raised by the Ministry of Defence about its effect on radar; undaunted, Ecotricity have now made a new proposal to turn Heckington Fen into a large solar farm with the potential to power 100,000 homes. The Secretary of State is currently considering whether to grant the required development consent order.
Future energy from Heckington may will be green, but at election time this area is true blue. Heckington Rural ward has been represented on North Kesteven council by Conservative councillors Sally Tarry and Stewart Ogden since Tarry won a by-election here in March 2012. In the 2023 council elections they were opposed only by a single Labour candidate, who lost 61–39. The 2021 Lincolnshire county elections saw the Conservative councillor for the larger Heckington division poll 82% of the vote, again in a straight fight with Labour. Heckington is currently part of the Sleaford and North Hykeham parliamentary seat but the Boundary Commission have transferred it into Grantham and Bourne (the successor to the current Grantham and Stamford seat) for the next general election; this should comfortably return a Conservative MP even on the party’s current dire national polling.
North Kesteven council was a rare Conservative gain in the 2023 council elections, after independent candidates had won the most seats in 2019 (although the Tories ended up peeling enough of them off to retain control). Last year’s polls returned 25 Conservatives, 16 independents (most of whom were elected on the Lincolnshire Independents ticket) and two Labour councillors. A subsequent by-election in Billinghay Rural ward last December saw the Conservatives lose a seat to the Lib Dems.
That by-election followed the death of Conservative councillor Gill Ogden, whose widower Stewart is now standing down from the council in health grounds. As in Yaxley and Farcet, we have a long-serving councillor to replace here. Stewart Ogden was first elected for Heckington Rural ward in 2003 and sat for ten years on North Kesteven council’s cabinet, on which he was responsible for a number of innovative council housebuilding projects.
Defending the resulting by-election for the Conservatives is Christine Collard. Labour have reselectd their candidate from last year Jennie Peacock. The electors will have a wider choice than in recent local elections, with Dave Darmon for the Lincolnshire Indepdendents and Susan Hislop for the Liberal Democrats also standing.
Parliamentary constituency: Sleaford and North Hykeham
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Grantham and Bourne
Lincolnshire county council division: Heckington
ONS Travel to Work Area: Lincoln
Postcode districts: NG34, PE20
Christine Collard (C)
Dave Darmon (Lincs Ind)
Susan Hislop (LD)
Jennie Peacock (Lab)
May 2023 result C 702/702 Lab 456
Previous results in detail
Whitefield
Knowsley council, Merseyside; caused by the disqualification of independent councillor Steve Guy.
And now for something completely different as we travel to the outskirts of Liverpool. A century ago the area of Whitefield ward was mostly farmland next to the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway’s route between Liverpool and Manchester. In 1935 the East Lancashire Road opened, providing the first fast road link between the two cities; and shortly afterwards the Second World War broke out. Kirkby quickly became the site of Filling Factory No 7, a massive munitions plant which ended up producing around 10% of the UK’s Second World War ammunition.
After the war the factory site was decommissioned, and Liverpool had a serious housing problem: the city had been heavily bombed in the war, and much of its remaining housing had descended into slums. The answer to this was Kirkby. In 1947 Liverpool Corporation bought more than 4,000 acres of land from the Earl of Sefton; by 1950 the process of filling this with houses had started, while the former Royal Ordnance Factory site was redeveloped into a large industrial estate. In 1958 Kirkby was promoted to town status by becoming an Urban District of Lancashire.
Whitefield is one of four Knowsley council wards covering Kirkby. It’s based on the Kirkby Park and Westvale areas in the west of the town, around Kirkby railway station — which has frequent electric trains to Liverpool city centre, and until last year was also a terminus for a rather sparse Northern diesel service to Wigan. (Northern trains now terminate at the newly-built Headbolt Lane station, to the east of here.) The ward also covers the town centre and the Kirkby campus of Knowsley Community College, the town’s only centre for sixth-form education. Whitefield ward makes the top 30 wards in England and Wales for Christianity (70.4%), which is a feature of the census return for strongly Catholic areas in north-west England.
The historic influx of people from some of the worst slums of Liverpool turned Kirkby into one of the most left-wing towns in England. In its early days Kirkby was a major part of Harold Wilson’s Huyton constituency; that seat’s modern successor, the Knowsley constituency, is one of the safest Labour seats in the land. Sir George Howarth has represented the town in the Labour interest since he won the Knowsley North by-election in 1986; his contribution to the UK’s elections is the modern system of postal voting on demand, which was introduced in 2001 while he was a junior Home Office minister. He is standing down at the next general election, at which the Labour candidate for Knowsley will be TUC figure Anneliese Midgley.
In local elections the Labour party are so strong in Kirkby that finding candidates to stand against them can be difficult. The Conservatives were trounced in this ward 85–15 at the 2019 election and haven’t been seen here since; in 2018 Labour beat the Lib Dems by the even more one-sided score of 91–9. However, in recent years the fight has been successfully taken to Labour here by independent candidates, and Whitefield ward is now split between two independents and a Labour councillor. The 2021–23 results here were all close, with Labour prevailing by 52–45 at the most recent poll in May 2023; on that occasion the independent candidate was the outgoing Labour councillor seeking re-election as an independent.
This poll is to replace independent councillor Steve Guy, who unseated the council’s deputy leader Louise Harbour in 2022 by the narrow margin of 54–46. He has himself been unseated — for not turning up to any council meetings in six months.
The resulting Whitefield by-election will be a straight fight. Defending from the independent corner is Brian Johns, who previously contested this ward in 2016 as an independent and (on old boundaries) in 2014 and 2015 for the localist slate “1st 4 Kirkby”. Challenging from the red corner is Labour’s Robert Owens, who stood in Prescot South ward last year.
Parliamentary constituency: Knowsley
Parliamentary constituency (from next general election): Knowsley
ONS Travel to Work Area: Liverpool
Postcode districts: L31, L32, L33
Brian Johns (Ind)
Robert Owens (Lab)
May 2023 result Lab 1062 Ind 916 Freedom Alliance 45
May 2022 result Ind 1193 Lab 1027
May 2021 result Ind 1011 Lab 975 For Britain Movement 73 LD 63
May 2019 result Lab 1400 C 240
May 2017 result Lab 1579 LD 164
May 2016 result Lab 1089/1063/886 1st for Kirkby 691 Ind 626
Previous results in detail
Brynford and Halkyn
Flintshire council, North Wales; caused by the resignation of Conservative councillor Jean Davies.
We finish the week by travelling over the Mersey and Dee estuaries into the hills of north Wales. The Brynford and Halkyn electoral division is a rural area lying on the high eastern slopes of the Clwydian Hills, with fantastic views over the Dee estuary towards the Wirral and the city of Liverpool beyond. (This doesn’t always happen. Sometimes it never stops raining.) Brynford is a small village lying above the town of Holywell, while Halkyn, Pentre Halkyn and Rhosesmor can be found to the south of it along the Holywell-Mold road. The traditional industry here was lead-mining, which has now given way to quarrying; those industries have pockmarked the ward’s hills. One area which has largely escaped the attentions of the quarrymen to date is the 303-metre hill of Moel y Gaer near Rhosesmor, whose summit was once home to an Iron Age hillfort. The A55 North Wales Expressway, which passes Halkyn, is the main link to the outside world.
This area is currently part of the Delyn parliamentary seat, represented by first-term Tory MP Rob Roberts with a majority of under 1,000 votes. His political career will be remembered for the wrong reasons. Roberts was recommended for a six-week parliamentary suspension in May 2021 over sex-pest behaviour, but because the recommendation came from the Independent Expert Panel rather than a Commons committee a recall petition could not, under the rules at the time, be opened against him. Parliament subsequently voted to close this loophole in the MP recall rules, but this was not made retrospective and Roberts remains in post. Rob Roberts has lost the Conservative whip and is unlikely to be an MP after the next general election, when his seat will be substantially redrawn with the new name of Clwyd East and with a rather larger notional Tory majority; the Conservatives’ candidate for this seat at the next general election will be James Davies, whose current Vale of Clwyd seat disappears in the boundary changes.
By contrast, the Delyn constituency has returned a Labour MS at all six Senedd elections to date. Its current representative is Hannah Blythyn, who has served since 2016 and was deputy minister for social partnership in the Mark Drakeford administration. Whether she had kept that job under the new Welsh Labour boss Vaughan Gething was not clear by my filing deadline.
Flintshire council is under no overall control, with the 2022 election returning 31 Labour councillors, 30 independents, 4 Lib Dems and two Conservatives. Labour run the council as a minority administration.
The Brynford and Halkyn ward returns two members of Flintshire council; it was created by boundary changes in 2022 as a straight merger of two previous single-member wards. Previously Brynford had been a safe Conservative ward whose councillor had been Jean Davies since 2017, while Halkyn had been represented by long-serving independent councillor Colin Legg. However, at the first election on the current lines the single Labour candidate Simon Jones easily finished top of the poll, while the Conservatives’ Davies beat independent Legg for the other seat by just a single vote, 500 to 499. Vote shares, for what it’s worth, were 40% for Labour and 30% each for the Conservatives and Legg.
Jean Davies only attended two meetings of Flintshire council since her re-election in 2022, most recently in February 2023. She was disqualified from the council for non-attendance at the end of January, presumably once her leave of absence ran out.
So the Conservatives are defending a majority of one vote in this by-election, and they need to hold the seat to keep group status on Flintshire council. Regrettably I haven’t been able to find out much about the candidates here, but the defending Conservative candidate is Alexandra Phelan. Labour have selected Fran Lister. There are two independent candidates, John Dickin (who contested Hope ward in 2022) and Joe Johnson. Also standing are David Case for the Lib Dems and Karl Macnaughton for the Green Party.
Westminster and Senedd constituency: Delyn
Westminster constituency (from next general election): Clwyd East
ONS Travel to Work Area: Rhyl
Postcode districts: CH6, CH7, CH8
David Case (LD)
John Dickin (Ind)
Joe Johnson (Ind)
Fran Lister (Lab)
Karl Macnaughton (Grn)
Alexandra Phelan (C)
May 2022 result Lab 659 C 500/316 Ind 499
Previous results in detail
If you enjoyed these previews, there are many more like them — going back to 2016 — in the Andrew’s Previews books, which are available to buy now (link). You can also support future previews by donating to the Local Elections Archive Project (link).
Andrew Teale
